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Original Card: Giant Oyster ­

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• Reduced cost by . ­
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• Counters are added during your upkeep, instead of draw step. ­
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• Counters aren't removed when the oyster goes away.
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Edit: Originally, I changed Giant Oyster to a card that Imprinted itself on target tapped creature, exiling itself, adding counters from exile, with the option to return it to the hand from exile. I thought I was being clever. I was. Far too clever. People pointed out that it didn't need to do that, and they were right. Now the card is much more recognizable.

I try to avoid lone keywords in the set (Greater Werewolf is an example of a card I struggled with to avoid giving it wither. Ug.) But imprint did a good job solving a lot of the oyster's problems. After paring this card down, there's a decent enough chance I'll use imprint more, anyway, to solve a few other problems in these early sets. "Use a counter to express this change" was too common a solution...

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Imprint isn't a keyword action anymore. Or whatever it was.

First, this is haunt, not imprint. Second, the Oracle template is cleaner than this one.

I've been arguing that we should do other things with Haunt for a while now, then what was done in Ravnica. Strictly speaking, you aren't wrong Dude... Haunt is a very simple mechanic at it's core, and exiling a creature on another creature is pretty much what it does. That said, Haunt means a very specific chain of commands to many people, none of which this card do. Maybe I'd think about switching to haunt if... you know... this oyster's flavor was haunting something. But flavor-wise, the oyster is leaving an imprint on someone's leg.

The Oracle template, as it goes (not counting extra bits that I removed, like what happens when the oyster goes away.):

"You may choose not to untap Giant Oyster during your untap step.
­: For as long as Giant Oyster remains tapped, target tapped creature doesn't untap during its controller's untap step, and at the beginning of [your upkeep], put a -1/-1 counter on that creature."

Is that cleaner? I'm kind of too close to this card to say, myself. I will say that I'm biased against creatures that choose to remain tapped. Seems unintuitive to the design of the game. There's also the memory issue thingy too, which is another reason why I prefer imprint. Doesn't sound like a problem, until both players forget that a creature is pinned down by an oyster and shouldn't be untapping. But I can certainly understand the counter-argument. I would like to hear other people's opinions on this.

This is pretty crazy wording. I much prefer the original "doesn't untap". This wording brings up lots of questions. Why does an Oyster with something in it suddenly get utterly invulnerable to all things that would kill creatures? When did Oysters get so bouncy? Why can an Oyster dodge Wrath of God by attaching itself to my own tapped Suntail Hawk first?

Magic has commons like Frost Lynx and Encrust in every set: you just tap the Oyster and put it on top of the creature and it works just like Encrust until the creature eventually dies. You just treat the Giant Oyster like an Encrusting Licid. (Don't actually errata it into an Encrusting Licid though.)

Fair enough. I'll be switching the oyster back in the next pass.